Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
